Journal: Slashdot moderation

Ow! I posted a comment to the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow story, and some people found it insightful and helpful, and it got moderated up a bit, but it's now sitting at 2, while a comment that provided no insight into the topic and just said "You're an asshole" is at 5. IE, Slashdot moderation tends to reward, not topical comments, but metacomments. Presumably this is well-known among those who post regularly, or who look at moderation with care, but it's a shock to me, and helps explain why /. discussion veers incestuously off-topic so quickly (or at least reflects the same tendancy)